This invention relates to network management applications that assemble network information, and specifically to a visualization application that displays network traffic information assembled by the network management applications.
Distributed computer networks, to which this invention applies, are systems comprising a number of components such as printers, computers, routers and the like, that are interconnected to enable communication among the components and sharing of data and resources. For example, a distributed computer network may include a combination of separate local area networks (LAN) that are connected in a wide area network (WAN) to form a single distributed network structure. The LANs are interconnected to communicate with each other by routers. Each LAN may include servers and clients that are connected by physical media such as cables and network cards in order to share resources such as files or applications. A server may be a computer or process that provides shared network resources to network users and a client is usually a computer that accesses the shared network resources provided by the servers. Shared resources in a network may include printers, other peripherals and software applications.
Network activity information relating to messages transmitted over the network is commonly stored in designated network information files on one or more of the network""s computers. As activity information is received from the various network components, it is appended to these files. Records in the files are time stamped to indicate when they were received. The information files thus maintain a record of all activities over the network over some period of time.
In order to view the network activity for a particular computer or group of computers, facilities are commonly provided to retrieve selected data for examination by the user. Such data may include, for example, the amount of traffic into or out of a particular resource in the system; a record of particular kinds of traffic; the identity of traffic originators, etc. Typically, the data is presented in tabular form, and the amount of data can be overwhelming. Thus, it is often difficult to assimilate the data presented. In order to facilitate assimilation of the data, the amount of data may be selectively reduced in volume, but this correspondingly diminishes the information that can be gleaned from it. Most often, such a reduction involves selecting a subset of the data based on the source and/or destination of the data. While such views are interesting in and of themselves, they fail to present a comprehensive, gestalt view of the network
We have created a visualization application which enables a user such as a system administrator to rapidly obtain and assimilate substantial amounts of information about various types of transactions involving the respective activities of the components. In particular, in accordance with the present invention, information concerning various aspects of network traffic is monitored and stored for subsequent retrieval and use. For example, the information may be collected by one or more routers through which the data passes as it transits the network, and stored in a separate file from which it is subsequently retrieved for display.
The user may select for display specific subsets of the collected information, as well as specific attributes of these subsets. The criteria for specifying the data may include, among other elements, the identification of particular components whose activity is to be monitored; the starting and ending times of the interval over which the information is to be monitored for subsequent display; the frequency within the interval at which the information is to be monitored and the duration of the monitoring at each instance (e.g., for a twenty-four hour interval, a monitoring period of one minute at every ten minutes); and other pertinent characteristics. The network visualization application begins extracting data from the network information files at the starting time and stops extracting data at the ending time. During each intermediate time interval, the visualization application compiles the information in the information file that meets the filtering criteria set forth by the system administrator, and stores the selected information for display at stated times or at the request of the administrator.
The visualization application displays a map of the network and dynamically overlays the map with graphical images that represent the selected information designated by the system administrator or other user. The information is presented in a dynamic, graphic (as opposed to numeric) manner that the user can quickly assimilate. For example, traffic between selected computers may be represented by lines whose width, color, density or other characteristic changes in accordance with the volume of traffic over time. By taking xe2x80x9csnapshotsxe2x80x9d of this traffic at discrete intervals over a larger interval, one effectively forms xe2x80x9cframesxe2x80x9d that depict the traffic at various times and that, when is played back one after the other in rapid succession, create a xe2x80x9cmovie clipxe2x80x9d of the selected traffic flow parameters. This provides an environment in which the system administrator or other user can accurately and visually analyze the composition of network activity and thereby reduce human errors that occur during interpretation of static data tables that heretofore have been relied upon for presentation of network information.